I looked up at the knock at the door and scowled. Was there really anything else that could go wrong this morning? If it was anything less than an emergency, I’d be giving more than just a formal warning to whoever the little shit was. The name on the door was Tyr Prince not Problem Dumping Ground.
Dad stood and waited for me to get my face in order before he opened the door. On the other side there was a brown-haired man in baseball cap and t-shirt with his gaze on the floor behind my assistant. “Sorry to interrupt, sirs, but Cassie thought you might be hungry and would need something to eat,” Joce said. “So you don’t pass out before the meeting.”
That had only happened once, I’d been sleep deprived, and I hadn’t passed out - I’d just taken a nap. And she fucking knew it.
“Mighty considerate of her,” Dad said before I could tear into Joce.
It was a distraction, and I knew it, but since there was some stranger in the room it was probably better for the company image if I didn’t sound like an asshole. I forced myself to relax, lean back, and smile. “See?” I told Dad, and it came out snarky even though I was trying for pleasant. “Controlled panic. Cassie needs a raise.”
“She’s your PR manager; it’s her job to control panic,” Dad countered. “What did she send?”
Sometimes I swear that man thinks with his stomach. He’s almost like a bloodhound going for food. The delivery boy - and wasn’t he a shy thing? - moved forward and handed over two bags stamped with the logo of the bakery across the street. One was plastic, and I could see the outline of bottles weighing it down. Drinks, then. The other was paper and had a delightful scent. Redbird’s was delicious for what it was. Nothing fancy, but still satisfying.
When he moved away from Dad his gaze lifted to take in the office. I only caught his eyes for a moment - a lovely blue - before they darted away and a blush crossed his face. He was older for a delivery boy, though it wasn’t exactly a job that took a lot of brains. Anyone could do it. Except Redbird’s didn’t have a delivery service. Cassie must have pulled some strings, or asked a friend to make the delivery. That would explain why he seemed so awkward about it.
“Well?” Dad asked, waiting for an answer to his question. “It smells good, but what is it?”
The man threw a desperate look at Joce and held up his hands, and some sort of lightbulb went off in her head. “Oh! Sorry, I blanked for a moment. Should be sandwiches and pie. This poor fellow hurt his throat and can’t speak right now.”
He’d winced when Joce jerked her thumb at him, which was an odd reaction for a big guy like him. Guess he was a big believer in First Words and didn’t like being reminded he couldn’t speak. Being in an office full of new people wouldn’t help the situation. I almost opened my mouth to say something and then bit my tongue to hold in the words. It would be incredibly unfair of me to speak to someone who couldn’t say anything back. I could be respectful.
Dad grinned at the mention of pie while I clicked the mouse and brought up my email, pretending to be busy. “Pie. Wonderful. I’ll have the pie and Tyr can have the sandwiches,” Dad said.
Because that was a great plan. Fuck. I’d have to sneak the second piece away from him while he was distracted with the first and hope he went for the sandwich while he was still hungry. And pray he didn’t smell the second slice from whatever drawer I hid it in. “Thanks, Joce,” I sighed, looking at her and carefully avoiding speaking directly to the blushing delivery man. “Can you make sure he gets a tip and our thanks, and finds his way where he needs to be?”
She gave me a funny look, probably wondering why I wasn’t thanking him myself, but nodded and didn’t question me in front of him. I wasn’t sure if his look of relief was because he’d escaped another meeting where he couldn’t properly exchange words, or because he’d just escaped period.
As she shut the door behind them, Dad spread the goods out on my desk. “At least move the reports first, you pig,” I teased, and grabbed the printouts we’d been discussing before crumbs and grease made them illegible for my meeting. The last thing I needed was a lecture from HR for saying shit. They looked okay (and still in order), so I set them aside and let myself wallow in the misery that was our current problem. The door was closed and Dad was the only one in the room; I was allowed to wallow. In less than an hour I had to go out in front of dozens of people - hundreds if the live stream intranet counted, and it totally did - and pretend nothing was wrong and that we could overcome the lies, misconceptions, and outright bigotry that haunted us. Misery was appropriate beforehand so it didn’t leak out on stage.
“Did we have any warning?” I asked as I reached for one of the pie slices and set it on the other side of my keyboard. Still on the desk and still in sight, but not in Dad’s reach and not immediately obvious. Dad had set both the sandwiches on my in bins (which were thankfully empty) and I snagged one to inspect. Redbird’s liked to use chutney and I was not a fan.
Dad shook his head, his shoulders slumping as he held the fork in his mouth. If it wouldn’t have made him sound five I would have said he was pouting. But he was my father and I couldn’t be older than my father. “Last I heard we were getting a spot on the 3 PM show to talk about the good we’ve been doing helping local businesses establish themselves in the community. Nothing about this.”
“Lord, they make me sound like a beast.” I groaned, sinking into my chair as I picked the sandwich apart to eat the tomato first.
“You didn’t even have sex with her. And she didn’t have your words.”
“Not the point,” I told him, double checking the reports and using my elbow to shift a page so the mayo on my fingers didn’t make a mess. I’d forgotten to check for napkins. “I have Jocelyn going back through the accounting now to check for leaks. We’re calling it a follow-up. At this point I’m just hoping we don’t overwhelm operations.” I’d made a mess of the sandwich to get the ham in my mouth next, and didn’t have a clean hand to get more details.
“How much is missing?”
I shook my head as I grabbed a bottle of tea. Not my drink of choice, but it looked like my options were either tea… or tea. I took a sip - disgusting! - before answering. “We won’t know until accounting finishes their audit. No one is even sure how she got in. She was here to visit, but she was never given any sign-ons or passwords.”
“A leak?”
“If there is, I’ll have their fucking head on a platter.”
“Tyr!”
“It’s part of the employment contract!” I snapped before he could scold me. “Damn, Dad, I’d think you’d be on board with the whole firing traitors and backstabbers thing.”
The look he gave me was anything except supportive. “And if they claim to be a whistleblower?”
“There are procedures for that which do not include going to the press and selling a story. And all this is assuming there is a rat to skewer. This whole conversation is moot if she got her information somewhere else.” And if someone was smart enough to piece it together on their own I wanted that asshole on our research team because, damn, what a mind. I know ‘lyssa didn’t do it, but she could have had help.
“You’re right,” Dad said with a frown, picking at one of the apple chunks in his pie. “We can’t really do much until we know more. And from there we’ll just have to follow procedure - which, I know, includes firing someone if we have a leak.” I wiped my hands clean with a napkin I found still in the bag, pleased he’d at least agreed with eliminating employees who broke contract. “I should have brought my laptop with me; we could get actual work done. This is delicious.”
“I’d say you could use mine but the PR team has been pinging me constantly with emails and IMs. I don’t even want to think about how big a mess this would be if Cassie was blubbering as bad as the interns on her team,” I said. Dad was looking sadly at his pie, so I slid the second slice into a drawer and pulled out a folder so he wouldn’t get suspicious.
“You said we don’t know what’s missing. Do we know who was hurt?”
I nodded. “The little gift shop from that tiny little town in Maine. They were doing well when we left, but about six months later the owner got really sick. They held on for about five months after that and then had to close down. Soulmate sickness.” All that was in the folder I had grabbed. I slid over a copy of the news reports related to that particular incident, keeping it away from the remains of my sandwich. “According to the local paper, which was then picked up by a larger press just last week, she met the wrong soulmate through Ball which triggered the illness.”
“Because illness is such a predictable thing we can see it coming,” Dad said, rolling his eyes. “At least libel like that won’t stand up in court. If anything we should be pressing charges against them.”
“And make matters worse?” I countered. “Then we’re going to get shit for silencing the opinions of others and denying them their right to be heard.”
“They have a right to be heard, not to spread lies.” Dad was only glancing through the articles, and he had a point, but that wasn’t the way it worked.
“You know that’s not what the press is going to say. We own a billion dollar company and that local paper probably runs on donations. Let legal sort it out. If they spread outright lies then we can catch them.” But it was mostly laying out evidence and asking rhetorical questions, as far as I could tell. The author had been very careful not to say things directly and yet it still felt like a punch to the gut.
Dad sighed. “I know. It’s irritating, though. It’s almost like you lose every right to defend yourself when you’re public. Everybody’s got an opinion on your opinion.”
“We’re looking into it,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “Quietly taking care of what we need to. Step one is making sure we don’t have any other previous customers getting sick or fading if we can get them out of it.” If we had to, we could close the portion with the bad reputation and reopen as catering or something. We’d be able to expand into other areas once the memory faded. We’d take a big hit for a few years, but we would recover. Probably. Maybe. It wouldn’t be the same.
“We need to have legal look into what recourse we have, as well. Not suing, yes, I know,” Dad said before I could get a word out. “But that still leaves options. Checking into what caused the illness, if any of it can be linked back to us - or even be perceived to be - and then what message we can legally put out there to at least stop the slander coming out of the news shows.”
That made a surprising amount of sense for the old man. “Right, getting a hold on the message and our image again. Damn us all if any of them reached back out to us for help. What would have happened?” Dad asked.
“Back into the system as a new customer.” It was the sad truth. There wasn’t any way to prioritize or even recognize a former client. That seemed like a huge miss in hindsight.
“There is no way to make that look good,” I groaned. “What a mess.”
“But a controlled one.”
Cassie was a dream. “Yes, PR is quite a team.”
“They are. Where’d that other slice of pie go?”
“You ate it.”
Dad pouted. “You liar.”
I raised an eyebrow and looked him in the face. “I clearly saw you put pie in your mouth. What about that is a lie?”
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